“That is the way,” she said. “I know it. Often and often, in my Mirror of the World, have I seen the way. When my mother died and was buried in the whirlpool, I followed her body in the Mirror, and I saw it come to this place and go by this place still in the water.” “But she was dead,” Leoncia objected quickly. The rivalry between them fanned instantly. “One of my spearmen,” the Queen went on quietly, “a handsome youth, alas, dared to look at me as a lover. He was flung in alive. I watched him, too, in the Mirror. When he came to this place he climbed out. I saw him crawl under the web to the day, and I saw him retreat backward from the day and throw himself into the stream.” “Another dead one,” Henry commented grimly. “No; for I followed him on in the Mirror, and though all was darkness for a time and I could see nothing, in the end, and shortly, under the sun he emerged into the bosom of a large river, and swam to the shore, and climbed the bank——it was the left hand bank as I remember well——and disappeared among large trees such as do not grow in the Valley of the Lost Souls.” But, like Torres, the rest of them recoiled from thought of the dark plunge through the living rock. “These are the bones of animals and of men,” the Queen warned, “who were daunted by the way of the water and who strove to gain the sun. Men there are there——behold! Or at least what remains of them for a space, the bones, ere, in time, the bones, too, pass into nothingness.” “Even so,” said Francis, “I suddenly discover a pressing need to look into the eye of the sun. Do the rest of you remain here while I investigate.” Drawing his automatic, the water-tightness of the cartridges a guarantee, he crawled under the web. The moment he had disappeared from view beyond the web, they heard him begin to shoot. Next, they saw him retreating backward, still shooting. And, next, falling upon him, two yards across from black-haired leg-tip to black-haired leg-tip, the denizen of the web, a monstrous spider, still wriggling with departing life, shot through and through again and again. The solid center of its body, from which the legs radiated, was the size of a normal waste-basket, and the substantial density of it crunched audibly as it struck on Francis’ shoulders and back, rebounded, the hairy legs still helplessly quivering, and pitched down into the wave-crisping water. All four pair of eyes watched the corpse of it plunge against the wall of rock, suck down, and disappear. “Where there’s one, there are two,” said Henry, looking dubiously up toward the daylight. “It is the only way,” said the Queen. “Come, my husband, each in the other’s arms let us win through the darkness to the sun-bright world. Remember, I have never seen it, and soon, with you, shall I for the first time see it.” Her arms open in invitation, Francis could not decline.